Show #45: Wiggle your way to podcast success

This 18-minute podcast is a conversation with the lovely Heather Gorringe of Wiggly Wigglers, a mail-order company in rural England, specializing in products for people who love gardening and wildlife. Heather has become famous for her Wiggly Wigglers podcast, which draws up to 20,000 listeners per month. Find out how podcasting has helped her expand her business, trim her traditional advertising budget, and engage with her customers and prospects.

You can download the show right here or subscribe through iTunes.

Here are the show notes:
00:01 Intro and welcome
01:18 Introducing Heather Gorringe of Wiggly Wigglers
01:57 About the Wiggly Wigglers business in Blakemere, population 63; mail-order company started in 1990
02:40 Traditional mail-order communications: quarterly catalogue; used to spend a lot on advertising in the gardening press
03:15 Heather started podcasting a year ago; she knew this direct method of communicating could help her strike up conversations with customers
05:00 Listeners love Heather and Wiggly Wigglers; last month 20,000 people downloaded the show, thanks in part to coverage in the San Francisco Chronicle
08:25 Word of mouth used to be the main way we communicated; podcasting helps you do this again
09:05 Massive change today in the media; podcasting is a great opportunity for small business
09:25 Production of the Wiggly Wigglers podcast is outsourced to a local Web developer; small-business owners don’t need to be technically adept to produce a podcast
11:29 Why the global reach of podcasting makes sense for a local business
13:20 Heather’s plans for global domination!
14:15 Future: perhaps curbing Heather’s enthusiasm; expanding the business by buying a premises near Ludlow, one of the slow-food capitals of the UK
15:18 Heather is talking to farmers about podcasting and she has applied for Nuffield Scholarship, which would allow her to study how social media could benefit rural communities
16:45 Where to send comments: email to trafcom AT gmail.com, call the NEW comment line at 206-338-4200 or post a message to the Trafcom News Podcast blog
Look for the Trafcom News Podcast on Blubrry.com
Theme music is “Beneath Your Surface” by the Elisabeth Lohninger Quartet from the Podsafe Music Network